Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.
Opening Prayer
Father,
Allow the soil of my soul to be a place that is fertile and receptive to
all that you desire to plant in my heart.
Tend it carefully and nurture all that has sprung up in me that is of
you; that I may be a garden of your delight. Through Jesus. Amen.
(JLB)
Psalm for the Week: Psalm 65
Scripture for the Day: Mark 4:26-29
Reading for Reflection:
Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants
something in his soul. For just as the
winds carries thousands of invisible and visible winged seeds, so the stream of
time brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly
in the minds and wills of men. Most of
these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to
receive them: for such seeds as these can not spring up anywhere except in the
good soil of liberty and desire.
The mind that is the prisoner of its own pleasure and the will that is
the captive of its own desire cannot accept the seeds of a higher pleasure and
a supernatural desire.
For how can I receive the seeds of freedom if I am in love with slavery
and how can I cherish the desire of God if I am filled with another and
opposite desire? God will not plant His
liberty in me because I am a prisoner and I do not even desire to be free. I love my captivity and I lock myself in the
desire for things that I hate, and I have hardened my heart against true love.
(Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton)
Reflection and Listening: silent and written
Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself
Song for the Week: You Have Redeemed My Soul
You have
redeemed my soul from the pit of emptiness
You have
redeemed my soul from death
(Repeat)
I was a hungry
child, a dried up river.
I was a burned
out forest
And no one could
do anything for me
But you put food
in my body, water in my dry bedAnd to my blackened branches
You brought springtime green and a new life
And nothing is impossible for you
Closing
Prayer:
Grow your good grace in me O
God. Make me receptive to the ways that
you water and tend this garden of my heart.
Prune me where I need pruning, nurture me where I need nurturing, weed me
where I need weeding, and care for me tenderly where I need your tender
care. I love you, O Gardner of my
soul. In the tenderness of Jesus. Amen. (JLB)
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